Word: souljah
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...Sister Souljah's voice is loud, vibrant and swaggering in its self-confidence. In her autobiographical first book, No Disrespect, she declares, instructs and makes no excuses for where she has been and who she is. Beginning with her childhood in the projects, she sketches her life, keeping the "essence as true as human memory will permit...
...Souljah's story is told through her interactions with seven people: Mother, Nathan, Nikki, Joseph, Mona, Chance and Derek...
...Disrespect complicates the public perception painted by then-Presidential-nominee Bill Clinton and the media of the woman who suggested that "Blacks take a day off from killing each other and kill whites." Souljah uses the book to reclaim and define her context, one we rarely see up close--what life looks and feels and smells like from inside the concrete buildings of public housing projects, even once those buildings have been physically left behind...
...goes through each experience, her life a collage of mistakes, scars, and smiles...She puts a Band-Aid over the broken pieces of her heart, puts Revlon on everything else, and faces the world like perfume on shit with a fake smile and a false sense of security." Souljah envisions herself as a big sister, offering the guidance she asserts is so lacking for today's inner-city youth. Although occasionally didactic--most notably in the book's conclusion "Listen Up! (Straighten It Out)"--Souljah's passionate delivery and obvious identification with her stated audience save her from condescension...
...keeping with an African-American literary tradition of "writing oneself into being," Souljah articulates her individual experience in opposition to and as part of a collective Black experience. Branded by the culture of distrust and mental devastation of the projects, Souljah takes us with her to an integrated suburb, on to college, into public service, and to the eventual production of her album, 360 Degrees of Power...